subject: Why You Should Consider Managed Email Services Instead Of On-site [print this page] There are many reasons to consider starting to use a managed email service, either to expand on what you already have, or to replace an aging system.
Cost saving
In today's financial climate saving money is top of just about everyone's list of priorities, and outsourcing for some of your needs can save a lot of money.
Email is a prime candidate and the perfect example. You could, in fact, pay to deploy your own server, and employ someone to configure and administer it, and upgrade it, and look after security - but a hosted service offers all of the functionality but with a much lower price.
Hosted services allow you to pay for just the capacity and features you need, if you business grows you can expand quickly and easily without having to investi in new hardware or software.
Reliability
In a modern business it is vitally important to stay connected with all the members of your team. When surveyed most businesses said they would have serious problems if their email service went down for even a few hours. Over a third of in-house email outages last over 24 hours, and over 40% of the issues are caused by a server failure. With a managed service someone else is looking after it, someone else whose entire company is dedicated to providing that service, you could have levels of reliability that you just can't match in house.
Features
When you deploy your own system you have to weight up the benefits of spending a little more to integrate features you need, or might need in the future. In some cases businesses buy more than they need or don't grow as quickly as they anticipated and end up paying for features they don't use.
Worse is when you deploy a system and then find you need to add functionality but either can't integrate it with your existing setup or can't afford the downtime to rebuild the system.
Hosted email services will allow you to just add new features as and when you need them, and with no outages or setup problems.
Security
With your own system you have the constant worry of security, hacking, virus outbreak, losing backups etc. With a managed service the provider will look after all of that. Regular patching, up to date anti-spam and anti-virus, regular backups. They wull take care of all those things that add time, money and worry to running your own emails servers.
If you are a small or medium sized company, steady or expanding, a hosted exchange email server may be just what you need to really increase your productivity and save some of the strain on your finances. It is worth reading about all the features and services the hosting companies can offer to help you find the perfect solution for your company.
